What about Music Sales has fallen 10%? Volume (especially of distinct instances of purchase), or total revenue? This is highly important if we are to make any conclusions. Before the digital downloads of individual tracks was made available, people had to buy CDs (which often carried many tracks the buyer never wanted). This saw people paying $15 for a single purchase which netted the consumer maybe 3 or 4 songs they would actually value. To estimate: that is $15/purchase, or put another way, $4/song (at equivalent utility). Now, we see individuals paying $1/purchase and $1/song when they buy something digitally. Total volume of individual sales, if you buy songs individually, simply MUST be increasing. But if a person is allowed the option to buy only the 4 songs they want off an album, they are paying $4/purchase, $1/song, whereas in the old Music Corporation model they were paying $15/purchase, $4/song. Of course revenue will be decreasing. If they wish to survive, they should piece together better albums, and offer better art.

As for me, I still buy whole albums, but I only buy ones I know will be good to listen all the way through. I have always been buying albums at $1/song. Finally that opportunity has opened for even those who listen to bad pop music and only want 2 or 3 tracks.

I agree with Jason in Chicago. For years I was forced to fork out $15 to buy a CD when all I wanted was one or two of the cuts. Now I download and pay for only those songs I want, and some of the music I download is by independant artists with no ties to the recording industry. The recording industry is unhappy that its business model is suffering the ceative destruction that is an essential element of capitalism. I won't shed a tear for them

The rising sales clearly indicate that the world is not inhabited by a sea of pirates. The problem is that the recording industry has not yet reconciled their business model with realities of the digital world. They have overpriced their products and attempted to package them in the same manner as they did 90 years ago. According to the standard model of Western economics, they should go out of business. In a preverse way, they have also actively promoted the development of piracy. 30 or forty years ago, the consumer would have simply have accepted the industry model since the industry owned the product and the only means of distribution. Not too many peopled owned their own record pressing factories. With technology however, the younger consumers are rebelling against what they perceive as near exstortion. You may not agree with the ethics but they are the reality.

Some years ago the recording industry succeed in getting a tax placed on all storage media, regardless of its use. They were very unhappy when they found that it effectively made personal use piracy legal. It was a very ill-conceived approach to solving their core problem which they have not yet resolved.

One thing that does irritate may intensely is accusation that piracy is the main cause of sales declines in both software and entertainment. I suspect that over 90% of the illegal copies of programs such as Photoshop would never have generated a sales since the retail price is so high. Those illegal copies are generally made by youth who don't have the $600 that it costs. If software producers brought out a version which stripped out all the high end needed by businesses and left a very reasonably priced product, their sales would more than compensate for the 10% who would pay for the product at full price.

Having spent 30 years as a teacher, I also know that youth download an enormous number of songs, most of which they never listen to. Had the industry developed a better packaging strategy for the core products, these youth would have purchased them. Kids today in North America throw change around as if it was of no value! Do some research and find out what your consumer really wants!

The music companies continue to fall back on the piracy argument because they refuse to accept the inevitablity of market change, primarily because of reduced margins. Until this change is embraced, the music companies will have no input into the new market structure. It is time to let go the status quo and help mold a better market for all involved.

That is the inevitable effect of profit-only capitalism in an artistic field. Technology and MP3�€™s have finally set the dogma of Quantity over Quality. If they can be obtained free or cheap, people will.

Starting a vicious circle, music albums are less and less profitable, so that makes costly music postproduction process less precise, and finished at a much faster pace. This makes albums even more crapy and artists ever more kleenex-style.

Almost all profits are returned to shareholders, not to develop alternative ways to diffuse artists, or alternative artists. 99.999% of artists are still fighting to get diffused, contrasting with a few privileged super-rich that can allow to produce whatever crap diffused by Majors, over and over again in an hallucinating rythm in order to sell and stay profitable.

Another problem is that market forces cannot work in a oligopoly, which is the only way to picture the actual situation. If the market was efficient, good products would make profits. Because people ARE still ready to pay for music. Example: the popularity of concerts is NOT decreasing. Radiohead and Rolling Stones�€™ selling records are decreasing, but they are fulling stadiums as fast as informatic viruses spread. Smaller bands still find clubs to play at, which proves the live music market is still on.

Last but not least, telecom companies are increasing their profits since the last 15 years from what crazy economical boom ? Internet ??? People just don�€™t want to pay twice.

I will always buy albums and cds. I buy them for their well designed covers, liner notes, personnel information, production crew and all the other tit-bits that go into making a great cd. I shop at a little wonderful store located on the south side of Chicago with great music and all.

Here are a few other factors that affect cd sales.

1)The music just sucks!

I will buy a cd if the 75% of the songs on the cd listenable or tolerable to excellent". Most often than not, these new singers can't sing, compose, arrange or write good music. They should all take music 101 course or something! The music is of computer influenced (loops and beats). So the end product suffers. I would do the same and buy only the "good songs" on any given cd.

2) Fat contracts and overated talents

Mariah Carey has a great voice! I never understood why her previous record company shelled out all that money to sign her to a long term contract, turned around and bought her out for over 15 million bucks. Warner did the same with a couple of artists. Such acts tend to push the cost of cds higher and higher and out of reach.

3) The trend towards "urban music"

Record executives tend to think that kids have money. Where do kids get money from? The parents, hello! In the race to please teenagers and changing the musical landscape, record executives are steering artists towards "hot urban sound" arena where most of artists are not comfortable in. Who wants to listen to Kid Rock rapping over a rock sound? They have destroyed the pool of creative marketable musicians. A couple of really good bands were not signed by such a lablel because they were not "Urban/Street enough"

4) "Cloning"

When a label or record company tries to duplicate the successes of another with a popular artist by releasing a similar album in the same genre. Here they "clone the sound, riffs and everything. Hence all the new music sounds alike.

5)Marketing and emphasis

In order to focus on "urban music" most record companies don't really bother to market good music (jazz, cajun/zydeco, soul and or international) and musicians (James Carter, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Y. T Cabrera, Monday Michiru, Toumani Diabate just to name a few)

6) Sony/BMG Music Service

Record companies want me to shell out $17 and then turn around and sell the same music through this music for 12 cds for a dollar and have the nerve to complain!!!

There is great music out there and I believe there are folks like me who will buy music if it sounds good and is resonably priced.

When I was a teenager we did not have mobile phones. The money has to come from somewhere to pay the monthly fees. This means less money for music. It would be interesting to look at the correlation between mobile phone and mobile phone expenditures and music sales.

I believe that phone downloading is mainly dominated by Apple at the current time. When RIM (Research in Motion) decides to unleash their efficient system of music downloading just like they have with information sharing (Peer to Peer). The only factor that holds Blackberry back from totally dominating the market is that they do not offer Wi-Fi and still fuel the telecommunications networks.